What Does It Mean To Heal?: A Photo Essay

Healing involves touch and is one-to-one

Healing involves the hands to promote relaxation

There is always a component of Love in the Healing Process

Love involves Preparation in advance, and careful Planning

Spirit is always Present when Healing happens

 Healing often involves the interaction between water, Light Energy, and Love

The nurse tends to a boy's wound with care

Advanced forms of Healing include the use of sound and color to target the emotional body, the astral body, and the etheric plane

It is my sincerest hope that one day i.v.'s will be unnecessary 

And that the focus on money is less than it is with insurance companies today

Healing starts in the Home

And is pure Magic

Consider the miracle of how broken bones mend

It is our birthright to feel this wonderful always

with Love and Aloha,

Namaste,

Reiki Doc

This was a favorite song of The King of Pop. Just feel that awesome healing 'vibe' from the Great Satchmo. : )))   Enjoy:

The Yoga Class Flashback

As a healer, I am a 'high frequency' person who like a hummingbird works with joy and loves what I do. Like a hummingbird, I am always looking for a safe place 'to rest'. Hummingbirds don't perch for long, but when they do, they need a safe 'breather'.

My 'perch' is a place that offers Yoga, Kirtan, and Vegan food. For some reason, that 'works' for me, and I go. I don't go for the food, although it is delicious. I go for the energy in the food. And in the place. It is fantastic! I 'recharge' and I am on my way to healing others again.

Yesterday in Yoga class, I had a flashback that was not nice. It was an unpleasant 'mix' of my medicine training and practice with a movement in the class. It hit me like a ton of bricks.

It was the end of class. Our pose was with the legs up a wall and our backs on the floor. Teacher came to each of us and gave us a neck rub.

When he gently turned my head to the left, and exposed the neck, I was overcome with a wave of guilt and horror. As a cardiac anesthesiologist, this is the movement I do to position the patient for insertion of the big lines in the neck. They are done awake. I use a big needle, and a lot of lidocaine. Nobody likes it. But their hearts are so sick, I cannot 'put them to sleep' safely without knowing their CVP, Cardiac Output, Mixed Venous Oxygen, and Pulmonary Artery (PA) pressures. It's just not possible to 'guess' when there is so little room for error.

When teacher pressed in the front of my sternocleidomastoid, at the level of my larynx, I also wanted to tell him that the bone he felt deeper in the neck was Chassaignac's Tubercle, a landmark for an Interscalene Block.

Instead, I let out a contented sigh, and released my 'doctorness' and 'doctor memories' to Gaia.

I want you to know that what I do affects me on a very deep level. I think it does for most of us in the healing professions.

I hope you have room in your heart, like my yoga teacher, to know that one day, all of us in the hospital will need deep healing for our spirit too. Allopathic medicine causes harm in both directions, to healer and patient, in its own way. Save your judgement for when you have walked in our shoes.

Namaste,

Reiki Doc

The Great Hunger

Sadly, I write this post.

I look at the day that passed, and asked, 'How did I function?'

Today was literally like the movie 'Field of Dreams'--"if you build it, they will come."

I am humbled by the severity of disease that passed through my O.R. And therefore through my care.

The firecracker to start the day was the asthmatic morbidly obese patient that was bed-bound. Could not move. Needed vascular access. Any operative procedure in this size patient is dangerous.  General or MAC (monitored anesthesia care)? Less is more safe. But when there was complaint about the pain from the blood pressure cuff, I wasn't sure if I was going to make it. I said a big 'cho ku rei' upon her arriving in the operating room. And once the vessel got accessed through the layers of fat and skin, the scrub tech and I breathed loud sighs of relief. He was literally holding tissue out of the way so the surgeon could work.

She got the full treatment of Reiki Plus. Everything but the kitchen sink.

The next had a severe, progressively worsening disorder and needed access too. We do not like to operate when platelet count is less than 100,000. And epidural's lowest limit is 70,000. Surgery is very risky but possible above 50,000 if you replace platelets and are very careful. Spontaneous bleeding from all mucous membranes is at 20,000. Patient had 40,000. We went for it. Wanted to go to sleep. So I did. That and Reiki too.

The day was going well, I had snacks and bathroom breaks. Which was a good thing because at eleven we started the sickest one: bad bowel obstruction. The NG tube wasn't actually decompressing that much. When I futzed with it, trying to clear it so it could suck, the surgeon was pressing on the viscera.

Bowel contents, when blocked, back up. Just like a sewer. I saw poop come out the mouth and go all over the patient. I was so busy supporting blood pressure and getting the NG tube to work and cleaning the patient I barely had time to chart, never mind do Reiki. I rinsed saline into the mouth and sucked it out repeatedly until clear so that the patient would not know what had happened when he woke up. Once the colostomy was working and I had caught up on fluids, I did. He got a Reiki treatment, as needed, but not the full thing.

I was sure to include 'happy trails' on all three of them.

The last one was worse. Not going to pass in the near future, but very very messed up. Like a seventy year old's history in only half the age. He got the works too.

Spirit has my gig. Those patients are coming my way! I was fine actually all day, until I came home and shared with others what I did. Until that time, I had not made the connection on how severe the work and patients had been. ASA 4, ASA 3, ASA 4, and ASA 3. The Reiki comes through, it does not exhaust you.

I had time to make dinner and play Battleship with my kid.

Guess what? The friend in Hawaii asked me to send Reiki to her daughter on mainland. And her daughter is now my friend too.

Warmest blessings and Namaste,

Reiki Doc